For Fausto Spotorno, from the Orlando Ferreres Study Center, in the year the evolution of this variable will depend on the monetary issue and the elections
For iProfessional
01/21/2023 – 6:51 p.m.
Inflation will be above 5% in January, driven by tourism prices, estimated economist Fausto Spotorno. “January inflation is giving us a similarity to December, but I think at some point it’s going to start to overheat,” he said.
In this sense, she said that the numbers that they are seeing lead her to the fact that in the first month of the year “it can give 5% and something, and behind that there is core inflation remaining at 5.5%, that must be taken as a parameter , the rest are variables such as the decrease in vegetables or the increase in tourism”.
In radio statements, he maintained that “how much monetary issue there will be this year and how much noise the elections will generate.
Key of the year: currencies
Spotorno considered that the “key of the year is the issue of foreign exchange. Last year you had half the trade surplus than 2021, not because of agricultural exports that were almost record, but because of increases in gas imports. Argentina always matters gas in winter”.
In this regard, he explained that Argentina “has a gas production cycle that covers most of the year, except winter, the reason for this is because there are certain inefficiencies in the market“.
For Spotorno, inflation in January will be similar to that in December, but it will begin to overheat
“If you want to produce enough gas to cover your entire winter, you will have more than enough in the summer and that is why in the summer it is exported to Chile and other places, but for that, you have to build gas pipelines so that you can send it to someone. The problem you have when you produce more gas, you have to do something to export it when you don’t need it,” said the analyst
He said that “that is why Argentina in recent years dedicated itself to having a production mostly for the whole year but in the worst moment of winter it had to import because it did not have as much capacity to export gas in the summer. When the winter, we found that gas in the world because of the war was very expensive and that made us spend much more dollars, so much so that we cut the trade surplus in half”.
